Thursday, February 05, 2009

Three of us traveled the 100+ miles to Nashville Saturday morning without tickets. The damn things were going for $250 on Ticket Master, then sold out. Some on eBay were going for $1000!

One of my concert buddies, Tim, has always said he can get tickets to any concert, so we shoved a hundred dollar bill into our billfolds, swore we would spend no more per ticket, and took Tim at his word.

So, we walked Broadway, 4th and 2nd Streets, and even down Printers Alley, had a few or two, until around 5PM Nashville time. We then went back to the hotel and rested up for about an hour and a half, then met in the lobby and headed to Sommet Center to look for tickets, or rather watch ol' Tim work his magic.

Inside, Tim asked the ticket agent if there were any tickets, "Nope, sold out!"

Back outside, Tim stood with three fingers raised in the air. To some, he looked weird, and they looked puzzled as they passed, but to another he had three tickets, and to others he needed three tickets.

However, a cop ran us off the Sommet property, telling us that if we wanted to buy a ticket from anyone we would have to do it off the property. So, we crossed back to the corner of 4th Street, where Tim again raised his three fingers!

"You got three tickets," one asked?

"No, need three," Tim responded.

Then the "scalpers" came, "How many you want?"

"Three."

"Got three for $250 each."

"No...too much," Tim said, as Ron and I looked puzzled.

"How much you wanta pay," the first guy asked?

"Forty!"

"You're crazy, you'll never get in with that attitude dude!"

It was the same story for some time, but after the gates opened, the dozen or so scalpers began to circle and look a little more agreeable to Tim's terms.

Finally, a guy came up with two tickets and wanted $90 each! I couldn't believe it. However, we said no, because we wanted three. However, Tim butted in and said, "We'll tak'em!"

Tim whispered to us to pay for them, that a single was a cinch! So, Ron and I had tickets!

I was not long before a single came along for $80 and Tim bought it. Of course, it was in a different section, but Tim said the object was to get in!Inside Tim parted company with us, we got a beer and went to our Section 304 seats. The warm up band, a very good "The Answer" played their set and the lights came back on. Still there was no one sitting next to Ron. Then a group came and filed down our row, stopping one set short of Ron. We then knew it was a single seat!

Ron went over to Section 331 and found Tim and brought him and another beer back to our section.

Long story short, Tim sat with us through the entire AC/DC concert. Some scalper was sitting high and dry with a ticket he wanted $250 for, which made us very happy!

AC/DC was fantastic, with a big train crashing onto the stage, and Angus rubbing his belly raw from doing his usual thing of bouncing and sweating all over the stage! Man, that dude can play that guitar! I think they only played three new songs from their latest album, and just about every oldie I wanted to hear.

When they did "Thunderstruck" I rang up my son, who couldn't go this time, and let him hear his favorite!

We stayed out in Nashville until around midnight, spending the entire time at "The Beer Sellar", a wonderful little bar on Church Street with 50 pulls and 100 different kinds of beer in bottles! What more could an old man ask for...seeing AC/DC once before he died, surrounded by friends, and with so many different beers to sample!

Sounds like the perfect guys' weekend -- glad the tickets worked out for you guys. My BIL does that for sporting tickets in St. Louis and he said he rarely pays more than face value for them, even from the scalpers.

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